As meaning making machines we conjure up all kinds of reasons for thing we do not actually know so the world makes sense. It is a harmless function of our minds unless we are basing our reasoning on false translations. I am not a language expert but I have been in the company of enough people speaking different languages and translation experiences to know a lot can get lost in the interaction. Translation is not isolated to languages. We each need to translate our thinking to each other. We believe others see things as we do but it is not true. How many times have we found ourselves wondering . . . it makes perfect sense to me, why wouldn’t it make sense to everyone else? Therein lies the dilemma of operating from the assumption of others seeing the same things we do. They may have two eyes but they have a different set up filters in their mind through which what they see creates meaning. In order to convey how I see things, I must translate not only the actual visualization but the meaning I attached to it. In some cases I may need to provide translation for the meaning as well. This can be challenging especially when we are entrenched in our perspective and do not realize the need for translation. If we are letting our translation of a situation be more important than the relationships we are in it is because we are certain our translations are the correct ones. I have been humbled more than once by my certainty and at the end of the day I am not sure it worked for me to not seek out a different translation. On my daily dates with God I find myself asking more and more for God to translate my understanding and grant me the courage to see it through God’s eyes. When things are translated through the language of love even if we have different translations we can still be with others in peace. Our egos are not wedded to being right. It is easier to breathe when love provides the translation.
Be About Agility!
Sometimes we are not even aware of the ability of our minds to survive particular circumstances until we are faced with them. There are many automatic functions that our minds that create our agility. We make assessments and decisions about people and experiences even before we are consciously aware of them. This is essential to our survival. Some things simply cannot wait for us to have time to think them through and analyze in-depth. The down side of our agility is our reliance on it for everything. When we learn to pause and take a look at where we might be drawing conclusions too quickly we bring ourselves back to the present moment. Our automatic quick decisions are based on the past. On my daily dates with God where I am invited over and over again to pause, breathe, connect to my heart, and be in the moment, I am given the tools needed to live from the present. We need our automatic programming to work with agility when the situation calls for it. Because of our intelligent God-given design we can trust it will. Being able to discern the relevance of agility in any given situation is a learned skill. When we recognize we are not in a life threatening situation, we can step back from our agility and make room for our hearts. It becomes an invitation to see things with new eyes.
My prayer for us is the curiosity to notice when our agility is being used to position our automatic processes ahead of situation simply inviting us to be present of heart today.
Be About Facing!
For some reason our minds have this incredible capability to cause us to imagine possible futures. It is unique to humans and part of what differentiates us from other animals. Like most things it is a gift and a curse. It allows us to be creative and imagine great and beautiful things. It also affords us the opportunity to conjure up the worst case scenario. We all know the scenario telling us it will be terrible, we will mess up irreversibly, and it will be too hard. This causes us to be cautious before embarking on new things, turn up our awareness, and think things through before jumping in. Those are the positive elements. The down side is when we focus on the worst case scenario we can convince ourselves to never get started. We are reluctant to give things a try. Facing those fears seems like an impossible task. The funny part is the facing part is just that. It is a facade. What we are really facing is the outer layer. When we take a breath and despite our fear move in the direction of it, the facing of it fades away. How many times has the worst case scenario ever happened? I honestly cannot think of one time and if it did it must have not been as bad as I thought the worst case could be because I survived it. Having courage means being willing to connect with our heart when we take a breath before we move into action. Without fear there is no courage. Fear shows us we are about to realize for ourselves the power of our own hearts. We will see the facing of the experience, recognize the fear, take a breath, and move forward and see the fear fall away like the strands of a dandelion in the wind. Our first step is remembering God is here to draw our hand to our heart and remind us we can begin facing with just a breath.
My prayer for us is the willingness to see our fear as an impetus to connect to the power of our hearts where our courage lies so we can begin facing whatever it is we fear today.
Be About Withdrawing!
I think God gets quite a kick out of me and the way I think. Sometimes I am certain I can sense God playfully elbowing me and saying, “silly girl, what are you thinking?” I am God’s consultant on my life and am constantly providing input on how I think things should be going. I do not even charge a consultation fee, isn’t that nice of me? It sounds like a simple thing to withdraw from a situation and let go of expectations but it is not. Each of us is usually fairly certain we know what is the best thing to happen or experience. God seems to have different ideas. I think the best way to be good at my job is to do everything perfectly. God thinks it is to have as many learning experiences that open my heart in the process is the best way. What I experience in reality is what I see as God’s will. After years of trying to fight reality I finally learned the power of withdrawing. Not withdrawing from reality but withdrawing from the fight for things to go the way I want or expect. I am not sure where I got the idea that I know best but it creeps up still. When I lose sight of God as the one who sees all, knows all, and loves all, I think I need to step into manager mode. Unfortunately, manager mode can quickly escalate to drill sergeant mode and judge mode. Before I know it not only did my plan not succeed but I am an idiot for trying it and not knowing it would fail. If I am willing to withdraw my ideas of how things should go, I experience the presence of a power who knows more than me and welcomes whatever I might learn from any kind of trying, even trying my ideas. Withdrawing is not just about letting go of my ideas what should or should not happen in my life or the lives of others. It is about withdrawing from having to be the judge, juror, and executioner of reality. It allows for the process of life to flow and unfold revealing its beautiful lessons. Withdrawing my thinking is the most loving, gracious, powerful, and intelligent (sometimes being silly is a good place to start).
My prayer for us is the curiosity to explore what withdrawing our thinking from any given situation or experience might look like today.
Be About Sustaining!
Most of the discussion around spirituality seems to be centered on the explosive moments. The game changing experiences where we have a shift in consciousness. It is the result we are looking for in our meditation or the transcendent experience from a ceremony. These are all wonderful experiences stemming from a spiritual connection. God by nature is fabulous! Creation is magnificent and there is no reason to expect anything less. And yet, I find the mystery of the way God in the sustaining moments of a spiritual life. The times when showing up for the daily date with God in some quiet and focus on my breath is just there. I do not walk away feeling better or more peaceful but deep within me it touches upon my heart’s desire to connect. It is the living out of the desire that become the little aha which can be missed if I am looking for a big one. It reminds me of the writing of Thomas Merton often used as a prayer:
“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
My prayer for us is the courage to show up for the sustaining moments fueled by the desire of a connection with the divine even if it is not experienced today.
Be About Infusing!
We can choose what we bring to the world. We can choose what we allow ourselves to focus on. We can choose how and when to love. We can choose what kind of life we want to live. We do not always get to choose the journey or the path along the way. We do not get to choose the circumstances all the time but how we view them is our choice. We can decide to infuse the love within us in any given situation or towards any particular person. By infusing the truth of who we are wherever we find ourselves we choose the experience we are having. Sometimes we do not wish to bring our best selves to something and so we find it infused with less than what is considered ideal or expected circumstances. But if we are choosing it then at least we can find joy in that. As an incest survivor I did not choose the circumstances under which I experienced myself as a victim. It took me a long time and a lot of missteps but once I realized that I can now choose to show up for the consequences of that experience I am no longer a victim. I do not always have to like it. I do not always want it but I am clear if it wasn’t that it would be something else. I have yet to come across anyone on this planet who has somehow managed to not have to face undesired circumstances. There are times when walking this journey I have chosen to infuse the best of who I am. Other times, I did not. Because God is who God is and love is what God is infusing in any situation, when I turn to see God’s view I see I was learning where love is needed. I can identify those moments when I feel I have no love to infuse and reach for the hand of God. I can choose to rely on God to be God and do the infusing.
My prayer for us is the willingness to notice when we are not infusing our circumstances with love and reach for the hand of God to do the infusing for us today.
Be About Gentleness!
Have you ever noticed the way a bird is perched on a tree? It sits there in the balance knowing its feet are securely connected to the limb of the tree and looks all around. There is a gentleness in which all of nature expresses itself. The way the wind blows the leaves of trees or brushes up against our skin. There is the steady and gentle force of which grass and plant grow from the earth. There is a gentleness with which blood and oxygen move through the body. Our heart initiate this gentleness of spirit that has a thread running throughout life. I know whenever I am caught up in the harshness of my mind, if I drop into my heart, I am less burdened. Perhaps our hearts are trying to tell us something. God is ready to help us see through the lens of gentleness. It means letting go of us forcing something to happen and trusting in the universe’s good will for us regardless of what happens. This is not easy and for me maybe part of why gentleness of heart is something I have had to painstakingly learn. It is only painful because I resisted it. How can being gentle cause anything to happen? It does not make sense in my mind. It makes sense to God and it is the vehicle through which God creates. If I can trust it as an operating design of God I am willing to let go a little and test it out for myself.
My prayer for us is the curiosity to explore using gentleness when approaching situations and see what happens today.
Be About Emitting!
Often times we can be unaware of the effect we have on other people. We tend to think of it in terms of what we say or do but we also interact with people energetically. We know it with others when you walk in a room and before the other person says or does something you sense they are upset. Energetically we are all emitting the energy of our being. The energy within our hearts extends far beyond our bodies. Science has actually measured the energy field of our hearts as extending six feet outside of our physical body. The feelings and experiences we carry in our hearts are emitting from us even without us saying or doing anything. God invites us to take a closer look at what our hearts are designed to resonate with in strength and that which deplete our heart’s energy. If we pause, check in with our breath, and be in the moment we are in we can begin to discern what our hearts are telling us about where our energy is with a particular person or experience. I often have to ask God to help me notice what I am emitting in any given situation that I am not aware of. It is not about finding ourselves at fault or always being positive or pretending we don’t feel the things we feel. It is about acknowledging for ourselves that our hearts house such power and presence in our lives and the lives of others. Why not do our part to take good care of it and pay attention to what it is telling us when we recognize what we are emitting or receiving from what others are emitting?
My prayer for us is the curiosity to notice what our hearts are emitting and pay attention to what it may be trying to tell us about our relationship to love today.
Be About Loveliness!
There is something about beauty that screams God’s name. Okay, maybe not screams, more like quietly whispers. The subtlety of a whisper does not quite convey the way we can be overcome by God’s loveliness. It is the enchantment of nature. It is the scene between two people that makes us cry. It is the joy of laughter from the gut. All these lovely elements of our natural lives that hints at a message being spread far and wide that life has this secret. The secret that captures our hearts when we let it. It is the deep knowing that is touched when we witness the loveliness of life. It is the light hitting the trees in the early morning or the warm touch of a friend when we need reassurance. It is seeing beautiful human being grace the screen or watching a flowing skirt lift and fall from the ballerina’s body. When we are given the opportunity to witness beauty in its truest form our hearts can stop just for the moment. The loveliness of life shared by God is to allow us to reunite with the energy of our hearts. It is the continual invitation amidst the mad and sometime harsh experience of life reminding us we are part of something transcending the madness.
My prayer for us is the curiosity to notice the shift in our heart’s energy when we find ourselves witnesses to the loveliness of God today.
Be About Unification!
It takes conscious and consistent effort to do the opposite of what is our default system. Our brain is designed to ensure our survival for which I am personally grateful. The survival seems from all the scientific studies seems to be one from the early tribal days. In those times it was essential that we stick with who and what we know. Any kind of difference could be perceived as a threat of death. The idea of being unified meant being one in proximity, ideas, and beliefs with people who looked like you and lived their lives the way you do. Now in a multicultural world that is connected across nations and boundaries are slipping away and being broken down, we are experiencing a shift unlike anything we have ever known. The people and ideas we may want to embrace go against most of what our biological design was meant to protect us from. This means the choice to engage in unification across cultures, genders, philosophies, and ideas is causing a lot of discomfort. We feel the discomfort and think there is something wrong. The interpretation of unfamiliar as discomfort causes our minds to set up boundaries to keep us from going outside the norm. We look for reasons as to why we are feeling uncomfortable and blame the situation or the differences themselves. When we pause and take a step back, we can see from God’s perspective that the differences we see are only part of the experience. God encourages us to welcome some discomfort as we incorporate our heart’s desire for unification with all of God’s presents to the world. On my daily date with God I learned to practice the simple discipline of sitting in the discomfort even though all I want to do is distract myself. Learning to do this is God’s way of showing us we can expand ourselves beyond our mindset of differences and find reasons to unify ourselves with all of creation. Our minds and bodies may be still running programming from tribal days, but our hearts are continually open to the upgrades God invites us to incorporate.
dailydatewithgod 